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About the Texas Adoption Resource Exchange (TARE)

AEA LogoTARE is a member of the national Adoption Exchange Association (AEA) and adheres to their standards and principals for state adoption exchanges.

The Texas Adoption Resource Exchange (TARE) brings children with special needs and families who are willing to adopt them together faster than ever before. The children registered in TARE are in the managing TARE logoconservatorship of the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS).

DFPS staff first search for local approved adoptive families and try to match the family skills with the children's special needs. If afamily is not identified during the first 90 days after the child's parental rights were terminated, the child's caseworker will register the child or sibling group on the Texas Adoption Resource Exchange. TARE staff at State Office review the registration and approve the children for publication on the TARE web site within one work day at http://www.adoptchildren.org.

Every child in Texas who is legally waiting for adoption deserves an equal opportunity to be placed in a permanent home. For children with special needs, the wait for loving families who can provide them with the extra patience and support they so desperately need can be long and lonely. Through the Internet families with approved home studies throughout the United States can search for a child to adopt that meets their adoption preferences.

The Internet makes finding qualified and approved adoptive parents easier than ever before. Staff would rather have waiting families than waiting children. More and more approved adoptive families use the Internet to find children waiting for adoption. More than 70 percent of the children adopted who are listed on the TARE site are adopted with the assistance of the Internet listing on the exchange. Through TARE, older children, children with disabilities, sibling groups and minority children, also known as children with special needs, spend less time in foster care.

For more information, visit the Child Search section or call the Texas Foster Care and Adoption Inquiry line toll free at (800) 233-3405. Thie statewide phone line is open Mondays through Fridays from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Central Standard Time.

If you are a Texas resident and are not approved as a foster or adoptive family, please fill out our Adoption and Foster Care Interest Form in this website's Get Started section. If you are a U.S. resident, and you are approved to adopt and have a current home study, please search for a child to adopt at Child Search.

If you have questions, contact us via email or call toll free (800) 233-3405.

                                                                                                                                                                   
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